


and i will kiss you like a king

by openended



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Episode: s10e20 Unending, F/M, Tattoos
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-09
Updated: 2011-09-09
Packaged: 2017-10-23 14:08:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,071
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/251154
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/openended/pseuds/openended
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Sam and Teal'c are very late indeed for a Monopoly game.</p>
            </blockquote>





	and i will kiss you like a king

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Geonn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Geonn/gifts).



It takes him five years to ask about the tattoo.

He's seen it before. Daniel even translated it once, on one of their very first missions when the desire to get out of cold and wet clothing overrode any natural instinct for modesty; she'd had to throw a wet sock at his head to get him to stop talking about the various ways it could've been spelled. Even if he hadn't seen it that evening in the cave, he's spent enough nights aboard the Odyssey mapping her curves and learning her body.

"What is its significance?" Teal'c asks, standing behind her as they face the mirror. He settles his hands on her hips and brushes the edge of her unbuttoned pants down, revealing the black ink over her left hip. It's backwards in the mirror, but he knows the words by heart and his fingertip slides over the elegant script.

Sam shivers and leans back against his bare chest. They have to make an appearance tonight. It's part of Landry's grand plan to make sure they don't all go crazy on this ship; she's not certain that one night a week of forced togetherness and board games is doing Cam's sanity any favors, but she isn't about to say so.

"Galileo Galilei was an astronomer during the Renaissance. The Catholic Church at the time believed that the sun moved around the earth, and anything else was blasphemy. But Galileo knew better, and advocated the belief that the earth orbited around the sun. The Church tried Galileo as a heretic. He was forced to recant his entire life's work and ultimately sentenced to house arrest. It's never been proven, but there's a legend that even after he recanted, he muttered _eppur si muove_ : and yet it moves, referring to the earth." There's more to it, there's history and other scientists and politics and a time when it was deadly to speculate science that wasn't supported by the Church, but she senses that Teal'c already knows.

Of course he knows. She has physics, Daniel has the Asgard library, Landry has his plants, Vala has roller skates (she assumes - hopes, really - the woman does other things with her time on occasion), Cam runs and breaks things and makes people worry about him, and Teal'c reads Earth history. She thinks he's up to World War I now, though where he found the material is a mystery to her.

His fingers dip just below the edge of her panties, brushing against sensitive skin, and her eyes flutter shut. They'll be late, very late, if this goes any further and she's not sure she can be the reason a Monopoly game was held up. Not again.

She wants to give him a reason for the tattoo, assign meaning to it and elevate Galileo's apocryphal words to a personal motto, but she can't. She has a lie ready at her lips, one she fed past lovers when they asked, but it isn't right for Teal'c. The truth is, she had just defended her doctoral thesis and needed to commemorate the occasion and none of the equations she'd used in her thesis looked cool when she drew them on her arm in Sharpie.

"Was it painful?" He feels her muscles ripple underneath his touch, senses her internal struggle between desire to return to the bed, still warm from their earlier lovemaking, or the practical decision to pull away and play games she hates so they can earn another six days of reprieve from the others. He slides his hands across her stomach, linking his fingers just below her navel. Soon they'll part and finish getting ready, but they have a few minutes to spare before they become conspicuously late.

Sam shrugs. At the time it certainly was, but she's been hurt by other things since then: staff weapons, pain sticks, bullets, knives, hand devices. She doubts she'd even register the pain of a tattoo needle now. "A little," she says, settling for a half-truth. She turns in his arms and reaches up, outlining the golden symbol on his forehead. It used to bother him when she touched it, until she explained that she was intending to worship _him_ , not the false god it once represented. "Was this?"

Teal'c briefly closes his eyes before answering. "Yes," he says, "extremely." He hadn't cried out nor shed a tear during the ceremony; it wouldn't befit a First Prime to show weakness and pain. Unlike the black words on her hip, his was not a choice. But like hers, he eventually ascribed his own meaning to the gold.

Sam raises herself up on her toes and kisses his forehead. He tightens his embrace and she rests her cheek against his chest, cursing Landry and Monopoly and the clock on the wall. "We'd better go," she says, two minutes after the game is supposed to begin. "If Vala isn't later than us, she'll have taken the shoe."

Teal'c's eyes narrow in mock anger. The shoe has been a point of contention for two years. "Then we shall arrive before her," he says, knowing that they are not the only ones constantly tardy for these games. He tilts his head and brushes a light kiss across her lips before dropping his arms from her waist.

The recycled air is cold against her stomach without Teal'c's warmth against her and Sam quickly finishes dressing. She's always the car, which no one else ever wants, so they could be hours late and still use the piece she loves. But watching Vala try to pry the shoe away from Teal'c is too funny to miss.

Their hands brush against each other in the hallway, fingers instinctively lacing together. They reach the mess hall only to find Vala sitting on Daniel's lap, triumphantly holding the shoe. Sam rolls her eyes.

Resigning himself to playing as the iron, Teal'c pulls out a chair for Sam as Cam and Vala argue about who's going to be the banker. Daniel is quick to point out that perhaps a former thief is not the best choice to place in charge of the money. Sam ignores all of them. Teal'c's fingers brush against her hip, right above her tattoo. A jolt of electricity shoots directly between her legs.

She decides to lose. As quickly as possible. Looking sideways, she notices a small smirk twitching at the corner of his lips. He's planning the same.


End file.
